Chapter 15 money and class

people buying a second home People think of a second home in America as a mansion by the sea or a huge Texas estate. People who buy second homes seem to be rich and leisurely. One home is no longer enough to show their wealth, so they want to buy a second home.One well-known exclusive resort has even started a new business that pays $250,000 for a timeshare in a luxury second home. But the reality is that the fastest-growing number of people buying second homes has been middle-income earners. In 2005, second home sales boomed, accounting for a record 40% of all home sales.The craze wasn't created because Oprah Winfrey needed another multimillion-dollar mansion in town in Aspen, or because the Kennedys ( the Kennedys bought another "mansion".A 2005 report by the National Association Realtors said the typical vacation home buyer earns just $71,000, the median income for a homebuying investor is $85,700, and the median price for a second home is less than $200,000 .

Buying a second home has become all the rage among the middle class. How could this happen?First, Congress passed a bill in 1997 that offered tax breaks to people who sold their home and bought two, making it easier to buy a second home.Middle-class empty-nester families (the heart of the baby boom years) can now sell their big home and buy two smaller ones. Secondly, after the "9• 11 incident", many Americans prefer to buy real estate in remote places as a retreat or as a shelter in case of necessity. And second, as the stock market became unreliable, real estate began to gain favor. In 2005, of the $3.34 million purchased for a second home, $2 million was used for investment purposes.

Secondly, people buy second homes for work, either because their residences are far away from their main customers, or because they want to develop new customers in different places, or because their spouses are already in other places. city ​​settlement.It used to be that if one of the couples found a job in a new city, the family would typically move, but now there are more than 1.5 million couples maintaining two homes in order to keep both jobs . Of course, technology has made it possible for people to conduct business at different work locations. With a laptop, a mobile phone, and a Blackberry, people can communicate with customers (employees and bosses) locally at home as in the office. connect.

But perhaps the strongest reason people have for buying a second home is family, which is driving the boom in second-home ownership among the middle class.A couple living in Miami bought an apartment in Philadelphia so they could visit their son who lives in Pennsylvania; Shwell and Miami's grandkids get together.In a 2005 survey of two homeowners, the majority said their main goal in life was family happiness or being successful parents; The risk is the disintegration of families (nearly twice as many with terrorism and the Iraq war as the biggest risks facing the US). Living in a second home has become so common that a new term has been coined for those who regularly commute between two homes: "Splitters."

According to the website Double Man, a website created by a homebuilding company called WCICommunities, a "double man" is someone who "owns at least two homes for leisure outside of work or to connect with family and friends. A person living in two separate dwellings".The migratory bird, the snow sparrow, changes its habitat once or twice a year at most, while the average number of trips between the two residences of the "clone person" reaches 5 times a year, and some people often go back and forth several times in a month. Some might even call it a "super double," who can divide their time between three or more residences.You might think that's what Oprah and the Kennedys are, but first look at the National Association of Realtors survey: Two-thirds of people who have purchased a second home say they are likely to buy a second home in the next two years. Within one year, in addition to the existing housing, buy another housing. The phrase "you must have bought more than one property" takes on new meaning.

This phenomenon not only creates an expanding market for vacation home builders and furniture companies, but also the potential for growth in the local economy of second homes.Most people who own two homes pay local workers to mow their lawns, clean their homes, and look after the property while they're away. A survey by WCICommunities proves that "double people" spend far more than they ask for in their new communities. They will not take advantage of local schools, but they will install telephones, cable and satellite TV, and go to local entertainment venues consumption, and they spend about $2,000 a year on home repairs, renovations and remodels.

From a policy perspective, the implication of the boom in second-home purchases for the middle class is that the tax-deductible policy for second-home mortgages may not be as much of a “sweetener for the rich” as it was first thought.Take, for example, a politician who wants to do things for the people and is looking for new issues that appeal to middle-class voters.He called for the repeal of the second-home mortgage tax deduction, which he believed was pushed into the tax code by the wealthy and a practice that favored the wealthy.But to his surprise, a large number of very ordinary people were angered by his demands, and he received as many as 5 million letters of condemnation from the people.People are passionate about their homes, including second homes.The potential for organizing second home buyers is enormous, with product needs such as loan repayment, revolving credit and insurance, and political needs such as low interest rates and high housing appreciation.

On a societal level, the trend toward buying second homes also shows that people have abandoned the 1990s-era philosophy of saving money in the stock market, rather than buying a home.Now, people are using their money to buy houses.Such a change would reduce the mobility of Americans, would once again increase Social Security's reliance on real estate values, and would likely lead to higher savings rates.But the real estate market, unlike the stock market, depends almost entirely on the success of speculative borrowing. And, as millions of middle-class people put their savings into real estate, there is suddenly a new dynamic: intense focus on what the Federal Reserve might do.Except for the business and political elites, who has ever cared who is the chairman of the Federal Reserve before?Who cares what the implications of his cryptic speech are?Now, millions of people are managing their money well, and the stability of their financial situation depends on whether interest rates are raised or lowered in the Fed's quarterly announcement.If the Fed gets it wrong, policy makers can anger the public with new quarterly announcements.The financial public is a whole new group, one that cares deeply about its own interests and is ready to attack practices that threaten them.If the Fed inadvertently raises interest rates, a large number of middle-class people who have taken out loans to purchase second homes will go bankrupt because they cannot pay their mortgages on both homes.

The American Dream used to be two cars in every garage; now the American Dream is two garages for every car. A Contemporary Mary • Poppins - The College-Educated Nanny Now, with more working mothers, the child care industry is booming.The demand for nannies has nearly doubled in the past 15 years to the point where demand exceeds supply.This has driven up wages, increased competition and created a new class of nannies: educated nannies. These well-educated nannies, often from families with many children, miss the warmth of home.While the mothers are at work, they are fully responsible for babysitting, perhaps under the watchful eye of a video camera.

The role of nannies in the upper class has changed. They are no longer a helper to stay-at-home mothers; their main job is to watch the children before and after school while the parents are at work.Even in the wealthiest households, women are choosing to go back to work, creating a need for new types of nannies. The formal institution of babysitting actually came from Europe, but the idea of ​​a babysitter has been favored by Americans, especially in popular culture, for decades. The 1964 film "Mary Poppins" (Mary Poppins) is by far the most Oscar-winning film in Disney history. The film tells the story of a fairy who comes to the world as a nanny to look after children. In the fall of 2006, Broadway producers spent millions more to adapt the story for the stage.

The all-time favorite American film, "The Sound of Music," about Maria, a novice nun, leaves her convent to care for seven wayward children for a single father in Austria . In the 1990s, the popular TV series "The Nanny" (The Nanny) also achieved success on four continents. Fran Drescher (Fran Drescher) played the role in the play, initially A cosmetics salesman who, after being dumped by his boyfriend, enters the home of a wealthy Broadway producer as his babysitter. In 2005, there were also two TV series about nanny, one was Fox's "Nanny911" (Nanny911), and the other was ABC's "Supernanny". There are millions of people every week.The story told by both shows is still the same old one: burly British nannies are better at raising kids than hapless American parents. In popular culture, these nannies are well-bred and respected by their employers, often as their emotional and intellectual equals.In fact, Maria in "The Sound of Music" and Fran in "The Genius Nanny" both ended up marrying their male employers, and the subtext behind the story expresses the idea that the nanny is as loving as a mother. Of course, in real life, nannies don't always get the same respect.According to a New York-based group called Domestic Workers United (Domestic Workers United), most live-in caregivers are not well-paid, low-educated, or both.Many nannies are illegal immigrants who take care of other people's children because the informal domestic employment relationship helps them avoid inspections by immigration authorities. The gap between popular culture and real life is not something new now.What is surprising now is that fact is looking more and more like fiction.In the United States, more and more high-level college graduates, who could compete for other jobs, choose to care for other people's children at home.Babysitting is a poorly managed business, so there will be no exact statistics.However, two phenomena are evident.The first phenomenon is that wealthy parents have a strong desire to hire college graduates.The second phenomenon is that college graduates are increasingly willing to babysit children for wealthy families.They delay raising their own children, so many of them can babysit someone else's until they have their own.The irony of this phenomenon is that, in order to care for other people's families, nannies put off starting families of their own. From the point of view of parents, nowadays, there are very few upper-class parents who are unwilling to help their children grow up. They will try their best to get their children into competitive private schools. In order to improve their children's IQ and test scores, they will spend Money hires a tutor for the child, and in order for the child to perform difficult gymnastics moves, they will spend money to hire a coach for the child. There were only 13 million working mothers in 1970, but now there are about 25 million working mothers.In other words, there are now about 1 million families employing nannies, most of which are high-income families.If you were upper-class parents, wouldn't you want a nanny who could make peanut butter and jelly and discuss Shakespeare with your kids? Demand drives up wages. In 2005, the national average salary for a nanny was $590 per week, or $532 per week for live-in workers.Nanny with a college degree is said to earn 20% to 60% more.In this way, the average annual salary of a college student as a nanny is 43,000 US dollars, while the average annual salary of a 18-24-year-old female college student who has obtained a bachelor's degree is 22,000 US dollars, and the income of the former is much higher than that of the latter.More income and less stress. From the nanny's point of view, living in the employer's home to look after children is an excellent preparation for future careers in teachers, child development, and children's studies.My personal bold opinion is that this is also an excellent preparation for future parenthood.Now in the United States, there are fewer and fewer married women, even those who are married, have children later and later, so for those who really like children, being a nanny allows them to get along with their children. a treat. Finally, as more people are willing to hire college graduates as nannies, and more college graduates are willing to work as nannies, the way to link supply and demand becomes more effective.What used to be a neighborhood-based connection between supply and demand with elements of word of mouth and luck is now a nationally important industry. In 1987, there were only 45 nanny agencies in the United States. By 2004, there were 900 nanny agencies.With chat rooms, electronic databases, and elaborate matching systems, there are virtually no limits to the connection between supply and demand.If a family wants to live in San Francisco for two years before deciding whether to go to business school there, if they really want to.You can find a good home for them there and babysit for them. Working as a nanny at an employer's home can even be a starting point for a career.Some parents prefer to have a reliable and helpful adult at home, and they don't want to fire a nanny just because the child has grown up.College student nannies who don't want to go to business school can easily upgrade to "nanny" for their parents, serving as their personal assistants, helping them with travel arrangements, bills, research, home renovations, etc., and managing other household employees for them.The nanny may also enter the mother's or father's company to go to work.This is also a good choice. Maybe someone will go from nanny to personal assistant, wife and Hollywood producer like Robin Williams's second wife.This is indeed a good thing. The increase in the number of college graduates working as nannies has several important implications.The first is that nannies have needs.They need a platform familiar with babysitting work - at any kind of sporting event for upper-class preschoolers, you'll see a scene where the parents and nannies will stand gracefully on the outside of the touchline, while the college The educated nannies wandered around the venue awkwardly.But, more broadly, what nannies need is a community in which they can share their childcare experiences and their employers' frustrations. A 2002 bestseller called The Nanny Diaries (a movie based on the book will be released in 2007) follows a SUNY student's diary relationship with a family in New York City. Messy people's experience of being a babysitter, the group of babysitters should be a kind of chat room that expands and expands in the style of this book. The second is that employers also have needs.Now, finding a nanny who can help their child improve their numeracy is considered a gold mine for parents, but it won't be many years before they think twice, when they have to consider whether their private lives will be censored. Everyone knows about it; they also have to wonder if the nannies they hire are exposing the problems of the nannying industry with abuse, underpayment, or overexpectation from employers.The real question is, how long will it be until the nanny unions emerge? Third, think about other babysitters.Contemporary Mary Poppinses may be a threat to employers' relatively unfettered freedoms; likewise, they are an even greater threat to low-wage immigrants who take the job as their own women.These hard-working immigrant women will either take further courses in "housekeeping management" or other courses to improve the ability of babysitters to meet the increasing demand of employers for service capabilities, or they will fall back and take up jobs that people are not willing to do— — Looking after the elderly.From an economic and health service point of view, this is actually a welcome development.According to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging report, by 2010, the demand for caregivers, including nursing and home health aides, in the United States will exceed 2 million.Perhaps, they will come from laid-off nannies. There is another situation.If popular culture about babysitters is to come to fruition, we might start to notice men working as babysitters, so-called 'mannies'.Currently, men account for only about 1% of all those who are engaged in home care for children.But when you look into popular culture, babysitting is a gender-equal profession.In recent years, there have been no fewer than nine prime-time dramas featuring male nanny stories, including the beloved Six, Ally McBeal and Murphy&#ff7de8;# 8226; Brown (Murphy Brown), yes, and "The Genius Nanny". Thus, the era of male nannies will soon appear.The wages of nannies are rising; the idea that men do "women's work" is gradually weakening; more and more single mothers hope to have a reliable man to influence their children; the increase in obese children has promoted a greater emphasis on "sports Exercise” needs of nanny.The climate for male nannies is ripe.According to a British celebrity website, Britney Spears has hired a male nanny (despite the male nanny's mother's insistence that her son is actually more of a bodyguard) . With manufacturing employment low, women wanting to work outside the home, and a majority of Americans with at least a college degree, suddenly it's not difficult to hire college graduates to work as babysitters, and, for those who want to For mothers who want to hire a nanny that suits their personality and lifestyle, a college-educated nanny can meet their new needs.Childcare, once a mixed blessing for American families, is now an increasingly important job, and the glut of college graduates suggests that many previously unskilled jobs will be lost. It will be borne by a new type of worker. (If you don't believe me, you can ask your chiropractor, hairdresser, or flight attendant what college they went to and what major they studied.) Of course, you should pay attention to the fact that when signing the contract, you must include the clause that you must not disclose the family life, otherwise, the nanny that your family once hired, or the liberal arts graduate from Harvard University, will use her wonderful pen to write All the disputes and all kinds of inconsistencies in your family are exposed in broad daylight.